Overcoming Lower Back Pain

What causes lower back pain? It could be a number of things contributing to the issue such as incorrect posture, occupation – sitting for hours of the day, repetitive movements in the spine, sleeping on your side or stomach causing that imbalance and lengths of the muscles supporting your lower back/pelvis, traumatic experiences, the weather, nerve entrapment’s/impingement’s, it could be a number of things.

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A majority of the clients I see as a Myotherapist are people with lower back pain. My client Osvaldo in particular had Lower back pain on his right side and a history of bulging disc on the right lumber spine. This client has been working for 30 + years, 10 + hour days 5-6 days a week working for a broadcasting network preparing cameras and visual settings back stage.

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A lot of receptive movements, poor posture and poor sleeping pattern/ the way he slept contributed to the lower back pain. Coming into the clinic he could barely walk straight, struggled to walk up the stairs and with certain range of motion and movement in the spine such as rotation… pain would come on. The treatment I performed to help him live pain free, gain range of motion in the spine and take pressure off the lower back and pelvis included two 60 minute treatments of:

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– Applying a heat pack along the spine to relax the muscles and increase the blood flow.

– Myofascial release, deep tissue and trigger point work through the quadratus lumborum (QL – lower back muscle), eractae spinae muscles (muscles running off the spine) and the gluteal muscles. Getting more movement in the fascia and releasing tension in the muscles.

– Cupping around the lower back region again release tension, increase of blood flow and to break up the fascia.

The treatment plan that helped Osvaldo in two sessions made him completely pain free. Osvaldo after the treatment was extremely happy not only because he felt good, because he was pain free, he could walk without pain, rotation of the spine was pain free and also gained more range of motion in the spinal movements.

Corrective exercises I gave Osvaldo to do every day were to:

– Apply heat around the lower back with a heat pack and hot showers before bed to keep everything nice and relaxed and free.

– Sleeping on the back to keep everything nice and neutral, not causing that imbalance through other muscles because that’s how tension and pain comes on.

– Hipflexor stretch the couch stretch, really targets a stretch in the Hipflexor muscles, quadriceps and encourages good posture. Both sides stretching for 60 seconds minimum, reason why is because it takes at least 60 seconds to stretch out a muscle properly and for it to lengthen. The reason why i gave Osvaldo a hip flexor stretch is not only to lengthen the hip flexors but also because the QL muscle is the antagonist muscle to the Psoas muscle (Hip flexor muscle) and its all connected. When it comes to the Psoas and QL, you can’t have problems in one without having trouble with the other.

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With the treatment plan and corrective exercises given to Osvaldo WE together have been successful in terms of achieving our goals of helping him live Pain free!